If you have a broadband connection you can catch some tennis action on the ESPN Star Sports Channel using coolstreaming. Here's a message posted on a tennis newsgroup containing all the details:

There's a program called CoolStreaming that you can download at
http://coolstreaming.org/

It's meant to allow you to watch/listen a few selected TV/radio
streams from Asia. Among the TV streams, there are two in particular
that I've spent several hours watching so far. Both of them seem to
be part of ESPN's global network. One of them is labeled in
CoolStreaming as "espn", and the other is labeled "test sports". The
reason I've focused on these two is that they are both TV streams
delivering primarily English-language content.

Using CoolStreaming is pretty easy for the most part. To start
watching, you just double-click on the stream you want, and after a
couple of minutes or so of buffering, CoolStreaming will open the
appropriate player to begin playing back the stream. If it's a
Windows Media Player (WMP), then WMP will open, although you need WMP
version 9 (or better) for this to work. If it's a Real Player stream,
then Real Player will open. If neither opens, CoolStreaming pops up a
window telling you to open the appropriate media player and it tells
you the filename that you will use to play back the stream in the
player.

This is really all you need to know, so you can just stop reading here
if you want, and go try it out. The website also has a FAQ and a
forum, if you're curious.

For better stream performance, it helps to let the stream run as long
as possible. While both CoolStreaming and the player (WMP or Real
Player) are both running buffers when you play back a stream, it's the
CoolStreaming buffer which is more critical to getting the stream to
play back as smoothly as possible. For reasons I haven't quite
figured out yet, this buffer performs better the longer you leave the
stream running. In other words, you can stop the player at any time,
and resume it or whatever (you can even close the player), but it's
important to leave CoolStreaming running as long as possible,
buffering that stream.

For better performance, it also helps to choose a stream that has a
relatively large number of users. The "espn" and "test sports"
streams always seem to have enough, even though the number of users
for "test sports" sometimes goes down to about 120 users. This is due
to the "Bittorrent effect" that CoolStreaming is exploiting. From
what I understand, when you run CoolStreaming on a particular stream,
you are exchanging packets with all other CoolStreaming users who are
also downloading that stream. The greater the number of users, the
better the stream performance for all users. Very similar to
Bittorrent.

If you have used Bittorrent, you will also know that while the
Bittorrent protocol can deliver high download speeds, one quirk of the
protocol is that you don't see these speeds when you first begin
downloading. It often takes a few minutes. CoolStreaming shows
similar behavior. The stream performance in CoolStreaming gets better
with time. It's hard to say how much time you actually need, so I'll
just share my experiences with the two TV streams that I have
experimented with.

The "espn" stream has a bitrate of about 280 kbps, and always seems to
have more than 300 users. After starting to buffer in CoolStreaming,
it only takes a couple of minutes before the stream begins to play and
even at the beginning, it generally plays with just a few glitches,
and it gets much smoother after 10 minutes or so.

The "test sports" stream has a bitrate of about 740 kbps, so it's a
much higher-quality stream. I have had greater problems with this
stream, and I suspect that it's due to the high bitrate. It always
has fewer users than the "espn" stream, generally between 120 and 200
users (perhaps because many people don't have the bandwidth to
comfortably play back a 740-kbps stream). It also takes longer to get
this stream to play back smoothly, much longer. I am using a
buffering statistic displayed at the bottom of the CoolStreaming
window as a yardstick for this. Generally, when that buffer indicates
90% (or more), the stream will play with no problems. Getting the
buffer up to 90% usually takes me more than an hour, sometimes an hour
and a half. Just to reiterate, this does not mean that I am playing
the stream for more than an hour, in Windows Media Player or what have
you. I only mean that I am buffering the stream in CoolStreaming for
more than an hour. As for playing the stream itself, that part is
less important. You can start and stop playback any time; you can
even close the player and restart it later by opening the filename
that CoolStreaming gives you. I discovered that you can even pause it
and, after pausing you can fast-forward thru the stream, although I
haven't found a way to rewind (go back in time) within the stream.
So, just to emphasize, the crucial thing is that you let CoolStreaming
buffer the stream, whether or not you have a media player running to
play back the stream.

Now you might be wondering, if CoolStreaming is buffering this stream
(essentially, it's downloading it), and you leave it buffering for
more than an hour, where does it store this buffer? From the FAQ on
the official site (and from checking in Task Manager on my computer),
it appears to store it in your computer's main system memory, in RAM.
CoolStreaming doesn't make any attempt to use the hard drive. So, I
would suppose then that CoolStreaming's performance might suffer if
you have very little spare memory, although I haven't had a chance to
test this out. According to Task Manager here, CoolStreaming
typically eats up about 20-30 MB, when it has been buffering a stream
for more than an hour. I do recall one time where it took up about 90
MB, but I suspect that was because I had left the stream on Pause (in
the player) for about 20 or 30 minutes or so, while I'd gone to take
care of something. That's when I discovered that pausing and resuming
the stream seems to work pretty well. I'm not 100% sure if that was
the cause of all that memory consumption, as I am still experimenting
with CoolStreaming. (Note that I said "pause", not "stop". If you
stop the stream and resume it, I suspect that it would take you to the
live part of the stream, and without being able to rewind, you would
lose the part of the program after the time when you paused it. If
you don't follow what I mean, just try it out and see what happens.)

Finally, this has nothng to do with CoolStreaming itself, but I did
spend a little while trying to find TV program schedules for these two
streams, the "espn" and the "test sports" stream. I found them here:
http://espnstar.com/tvtimes/tv*times_index.jsp
Or, alternatively, go to http://espnstar.com/ and look on the
left-hand side of the page for a link called "TV Times", and click on
that. You have to choose a country, as well as the channel whose
listings you want. For the "espn" stream, I use "China" as the
country and "ESPN Asia" as the channel. China isn't the only country
where ESPN Asia, but I haven't bothered to check what other countries
have it. For the "test sports" stream, the channel you want is "STAR
SOUTH EAST Asia" (it's actually Star Sports, which seems to have
merged with ESPN in Asia). I get that channel by selecting
"Singapore" as the country. The listings that I see there for these
two channels has matched up very well with the programs that I see in
the two streams. They also cover other sports besides tennis, of
course, although tennis is the only sport I'm really interested in.
Right now, Star Sports has some TV show discussing and reviewing
soccer (football) matches, something about Barclays League or some
damn thing. I know nothing about soccer.

I just wanted to add that my experience with CoolStreaming so far has
been terrific. It's taken me a bit of experimentation, but I have
managed to watch 4 tennis matches on it so far: one of the ATP Indian
Wells semifinal a few weeks ago (ESPN Asia), most of the Federer-Ancic
match (Star Sports) in Miami, and both the ATP semifinals (one on
ESPN, the other on Star Sports) in Miami. In all cases, it performed
extremely well. Not perfectly, though. During the Federer-Ancic
match, I did have a little trouble with the stream that lasted about
10 minutes, and during the Federer-Agassi semifinal my Internet
connection went out for about 2 minutes or so, though I was able to
get the stream back up and running fairly quickly. So, while it's not
perfect, I think it makes an awesome complement to regular TV
coverage, especially the shitty coverage we get in the USA.

As for running on my PC, I have had no issues with it. The only
possible problem comes from the amount of memory that it eats up (due
to buffering), but I don't really view that as a flaw in the software.
I think that's just the "cost of doing business"; if you want to watch
an Internet TV stream in this way, it's bound to cost you more than 5
MB of your system memory. It also would be nice if the people behind
CoolStreaming would add more channels to their list, but from reading
in their forum, I get the impression that that is something which is
largely beyond their control (they rely on volunteers for that, and so
on). The concept behind the software is a great one, I think, and the
software itself seems to work very well in practice too. I think the
developers themselves are aware of that, and are keeping it a
closed-source program (perhaps with the intent of using some of the
underlying code in some future start-up business of theirs). If you
want to read more about it, go here:
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~jcliu/Pa*pers/CoolStreaming.pdf

I intend to try it again for tomorrow's Federer-Nadal match, even
though it will be covered on TV here. I also suggest that if you are
interested in this thing at all, that you give it a try then too, and
watch the match on TV alongside your computer. For the upcoming
clay-court season, I expect that ESPN USA won't cover any of the TMS
events in Europe (just like last year), but I suspect that one or more
of these Asian ESPN channels might. Last year, I watched all these
events on the Tennis Channel, and I expect to do so again. For people
in the USA who don't have the Tennis Channel, you might want to give
this CoolStreaming thing a try.

If you do try this thing out, please write back here with your
thoughts and experiences. I'm still experimenting with this program
myself, and I have written everything that I know about it, but I
would like to hear if there's something I've overlooked or
misinterpreted about how CoolStreaming works. Also, if anybody else
here has come across another streaming program similar to this, I'd
very much like to hear about it.

makro120

04-14-2005, 11:20 AM

I have tried it myself since yesterday and all I can say is that I can't see the tennis balls with the quality of the picture. But it is still worth it. I saw Federer against MOntanes this morning and 5 pm or something like that they will show monte carlo last 16 (not live).

ClaycourtaZzZz.

04-14-2005, 11:25 AM

thank you very much!
and c'mon ROGER;););)

where can i watch monte carlo?

ClaycourtaZzZz.

04-14-2005, 11:28 AM

the link for the download doesn't work:(

makro120

04-14-2005, 11:37 AM

The link for the download didn't work for me either for a moment, but when I tried some hours later it worked. You can see monte carlo in test sports (starsport), but they don't show it live. They will show around 5pm today's matches in monte carlo.

FrogBurger

04-14-2005, 11:38 AM

Is anybody getting it in France. I got the message "cannot download" so i gave up.

ClaycourtaZzZz.

04-14-2005, 11:39 AM

The link for the download didn't work for me either for a moment, but when I tried some hours later it worked. You can see monte carlo in test sports (starsport), but they don't show it live. They will show around 5pm today's matches in monte carlo.

a link please;)

thx

are you a member of rf.com?

makro120

04-14-2005, 11:46 AM

http://coolstreaming.org.nyud.net:8090/Cool_42_exp.exe

IF this one doesn't work right now try later, the 1st time I tried it didn't work but some hours later it did.

No, I am not a member of rf.com

ClaycourtaZzZz.

04-14-2005, 12:20 PM

http://coolstreaming.org.nyud.net:8090/Cool_42_exp.exe

IF this one doesn't work right now try later, the 1st time I tried it didn't work but some hours later it did.

No, I am not a member of rf.com

thx

go to www.rogerfederer.com

then register and be happy there're realy nice people!

we're always in the chat room and cheer for him :worship: :worship: :worship:

ClaycourtaZzZz.

04-14-2005, 12:37 PM

i can't get the link for the testsport :confused: :confused:

SwissMister1

04-14-2005, 03:45 PM

I downloaded the Cool Streaming program - but no channels are showing up!